Arnon Dror: Keep Kyrie Irving

Arnon Dror: On Talks of Trading Kyrie Irving

It’s absurd. Arnon Dror thinks fans who want to trade Kyrie Irving are too focused on short-term gains. As a business executive, he sees the move to trade Irving for someone unproven fraught with simply too much risk. It’s almost ridiculous! Here’s why Kyrie Irving should stay a Celtic:

1. Kyrie Irving is an excellent leader – Modern basketball, or the NBA to be more specific, is finally moving away from one-man teams that were prevalent in the last decade. These are basketball superstars who got to call all the shots, even if it means shutting down the league. Sure, these big names have come to define or are the face of the sport, but change is afoot, and everyone knows it.

Fans can see this in the Warriors, who are led by devout Christian Steph Curry. While the Celtics aren’t as vocal with their spiritual views, Arnon Dror explains they nonetheless operate on the same wavelength — that is to play selfless and egoless basketball. These words of Gordon Hayward describe Al Horford, but they can almost be said for everyone in the team, “Al just wants to win. He doesn’t care if he’s scoring 40 points or if he’s scoring five points, as long as we win.”

Kyrie Irving is more than just a top 5-point guard in the league. As a Celtic, he’s taken it upon himself to guide the younger players in the team. He’s engaged with the coaching staff as well. Overall, Arnon Dror can’t think of a more valuable player who can beat what Irving has given to the team. He’d go so far as to say that Irving’s leadership carried them through, amidst all the injuries.

2. Kyrie Irving is an offensive monster – Arnon Dror can count with his hands the number of players who can handle better than Irving. He also finds the clamor to bench Irving to start Terry Rozier equally absurd. Comparing the two, it’s obvious that Irving can finish at the rim better and more reliably than Scary Terry. And that’s just on offense alone. Add in his extensive experience in the playoffs and the finals (lest fans forget that Irving had 29.4 ppg in the 2017 Finals playing alongside LeBron James), there’s no doubt that he is the foundation with which the Celtics’ offense is built on.

3. Kyrie Irving just turned 26 years old – Read that again. Irving just turned 26 last month. Arnon Dror explains it’s at this age when players usually peak and start to play at their prime. This means there’s no saying where Irving will take the team next in the next five years. He’s already excellent now, so it’s reasonable to expect he’ll be phenomenal soon enough. The Celtics would be very foolish to let him walk away and have another team benefit from the development they’ve provided him. In the end, fans should block all thoughts that there’s something to be gained from trading Irving away — there’s nothing to be gained from it.